”Economic dimensions of migration”

Friday October 1, 9h00-10h30
Panel 7: “Today's labour migration – how should it be managed and in whose interest?”

Labour migration, or the movement of people across borders for employment, has in the twenty-first century moved to the top of the policy agendas of many countries of origin, transit and destination. The potential returns from such policies – returns to countries all along the migration spectrum and to the migrants themselves - are enormous: Ageing and shrinking labour markets in developed countries are augmented by able new workers; surplus labour from developing countries is put to productive use; and migrants are able to earn wages that they otherwise could not obtain. The challenge is to manage this labour migration in a manner that is equitable, stable and consistent with liberal democratic principles. The panel will examine the parameters of modern labour migration by first posing and then responding to key, strategic questions: How can the positive impacts of labour migration be maximized and irregular migration deterred? What investments need to be undertaken and what incentives offered to migrants to ensure that the mistakes of the former ‘guestworker’ programs are not repeated? What changes are needed to accommodate the increasing feminisation of labour migration? Are the programs championed by various welfare states allowing long-term temporary migrants to access benefits and convert to permanent status the answer? How do the outcomes of temporary labour migration programs compare with the permanent labour migration programs offered by countries such as Canada, the U.S.A., Australia and New Zealand? And last, but possibly most important, what are the long-term implications across a broad spectrum of strategic considerations – including the development of tolerant societies - of confining labour migrants to temporary and, generally, low-skilled work

Friday October 1, 11h00-12h30
Panel 8: “Amnesties and regularization programs: What has been learned over the last twenty years?”

Most amnesties and regularization programs in Europe, North America and Australia have resulted from the failure of domestic asylum and migration systems to cope with the volume and complexity of irregular migration, including undocumented arrivals, long-term overstays and asylum seekers. National authorities have reacted to these failures by tightening entry controls streamlining asylum procedures, adding processing resources and reducing the benefits available to refugee claimants. More often than not, these measures have also been accompanied by amnesties and regularization programs. The role of these amnesties and quasi-amnesties was to clear out the processing queues that had led the original systems to falter. Without a clearance, new claimants would have entered long processing queues and the revised systems, whose principal design goal was speedy processing, would have been stillborn.
Underlying the revised processing systems are universally held assumptions about migrant behavior and sensitivity to host country practices. The most important assumption is that longer processing times, occasioned by longer queues, induce larger numbers of migrants to seek asylum and to overstay their conditions of entry. It is also widely held that migrants are aware of, and are discouraged by, ‘tougher’ measures and that this ‘toughness’ offsets the draw of an amnesty.
Surprisingly, given the scale of the problem and the resources it consumes, there has been little work to verify key policy assumptions. This panel will examine the empirical evidence that supports amnesties and underpins the design of asylum procedures. The aim of the panel is to identify measures that are both effective in moderating irregular migration and fair, bearing in mind that the global refugee determination system is a hard-won asset.